16062013 – VK3/VC-003

Parked car just off Acheron Way. The gate is serious. They must be trying to stop you taking your train up the hill. Just under 2hrs to reach the top. Good nice clear track.

The top is quite open with lots of well placed trees to throw an antenna over and plenty of signs to attach a squid poles to. The area so clear didn’t even bother trying to raise the ends of dipole. Just pulled them out.

VK3ZPF setup under a tree and went off chasing bands whilst I stayed on 40M with dipole and 2M HT

Single 2M contact with VK3MRG on his way down from VN-013. 4 S2S contacts VK3MRG on VN-013, VK3YY on VC-006, VK3YAR (new activator !!) on VN-023 and VK3KAB on VT-006. Single NP contact with VK5PAS. The majority of contacts were from QRP chasers and the only difference is the signals average 57 instead of 59. On the top of a hill it is clear and you can hear all (unless VK3/VC-019 (Mt Warrenheip) and VK3/VC-006 (Mt St Leonard) and chasers will look for you signal so it was good to see low power everywhere. As we are bringing HF to life on weekends there is no need to interfere with the other users. In a fact sure the licence rules say only enough power to make the contact.

Slowly getting the hang of new GPS. I was confused when the map was showing off track on the way up but just as the track actual overlay on the proposed shows, the tracks are not accurate. Not a big issue. In this case you didn’t need the GPS at all. Just a toy to play with on the way up.

This is a screen shot from the GPS at the top. With 20m contour lines you are in the zone as soon as hit the last circle.

Stats from the GPS. It was cold and uphill. The first data point is the 200 odd K’s from VS-050 the previous day. Deleted before printing the graphs below.